


New Years Sons

by keycchan



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Bittersweet, Glorified Mentions of Coconuts and Holidays, Growing Old Together, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Post-Canon, Schmoop, billy is just a little vain, goody manages to be annoying from halfway across the country, just a little sad. a LOTTLE schmoopy, vasquez is an optimist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-05
Updated: 2019-04-05
Packaged: 2020-01-05 01:51:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18356168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keycchan/pseuds/keycchan
Summary: And of course. Himself, and Billy. Men far from homes long lost to them, Vasquez over land and Billy over sea. Both with too much blood on their own hands, for their sin of existing in the colour they are, in speaking the tongue they were raised with. Neither of them expected to live long — numbers to their names, a price to their lives, on the run forever until a bullet outruns them first. Rose Creek had been their way to welcome the end, on their own terms.But they lived. They live, like the others do, they live and they carried on their own path, and on that path they had joined hands. They’ve not let go. Not once.or: Vasquez and Billy are old together. This, too, is a victory.





	New Years Sons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jolien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jolien/gifts).



> **warnings:** mention of some background character death (just a little bit, very brief, not very sad at all), emma/faraday as a platonic married couple, referenced character injury, google translated spanish, and - as always with me - possible historical inaccuracies up the wazoo.
> 
> enjoy.

They lived. All of them. They lived, and continue living, long after Bogue’s in the ground like he should be. Long, long after most of them leave Rose Creek behind, leave each other behind to go their own path. The new year comes to each of them, and keep coming. 1879 falls away, leaves them to catch up to the future they didn’t expect to have, to keep. And then 1880 comes and goes. Then 1881. 1882. And then over, and over.

Days pass. Stars burn. A volcano speaks. A woman comes from France to look over new york,  _velando por la libertad_. There is blood shed still — from London to South Dakota. New poets are born. Old poets then die, make men like them hang their heads to silence. There is panic, and all that followed after. Greece brings the world together for a little while. The horses stop running in San Francisco.

All of it happens, and Vasquez is happy to see it all, sad as some of it may be. Angry as most of it is. Unfair. But, you see — none of them expected to walk away from Rose Creek. A one horse town against an army — the chances been slim from the start. Starved skinny, if they were being honest. Bogue had manpower, horses, gunpowder up to his teeth.  _They_  had farmers, a few sticks of dynamite, seven idiots with a death wish and a widower with a grudge.

By all rights, they shouldn’t have made it out breathing.

Still. Vasquez thinks that being proven wrong is nice, once in awhile. Even if his partner may disagree.

“It’s stupid,” says said partner. All long hair and dark eyes, piercing, even though they water. Glaring at the envelope in his hand, like if he stares long enough, it will catch flames. He sneezes one more time. “He’s doing this to irritate me.”

Vasquez grins big until he can feel his eyes wrinkle. “Means that it’s working then,  _amorcito_.”

Billy rolls his eyes. Thrusts —  _throws_  the letter with deadly aim at Vasquez, who laughs and laughs, because it has been years since Rose Creek.  _A mí la muerte me pela los dientes_ , he always tells Billy. He has not been scared of death since he left that town, so many decades ago — he is hardly scared now, of his grey-haired lover with his bad shoulder and his allergies to pollen. (Besides, if Billy has any offense to Vasquez laughing at and with everything, he would have left already. 22 years ago, or the years since.)

He takes the envelope, takes out the dried flower inside ( _margarita_ , fragile and yellowing) and the expensive, thick letter within (written in heavy ink, flowing writing.) It’s still dim outside — birds barely awake, sun just only rising, but enough that he can read the letter he unfolds. There’s a creak beside him; Billy, leaning against the wall as if he were still in his forties, instead of on the chair on the other side of their little table, out here on their veranda. When he gives Billy a smile, he only gets a glare back. Hard eyes, hard mouth. (Soft,  _soft_  heart.)

“I’m fine,” Billy says, arms crossing, “Read.”

Vasquez chuckles, and does.

( Six of them left Rose Creek by the end of everything. Two stayed. Horne said he was young no more, wanted to settle down. Faraday — he wanted to leave too, but then he said he’s spent his whole life moving from town to town. Said he took the explosion as a sign to finally “ _park my ass somewhere decent and croak out in a way that won’t kill my ma all over again_.”

Vasquez knows better. They all did. One look at Joshua, with his missing fingers and limbs and half his body and face gone to scar tissue — there’s no life out in the sands for a man like him.

No one said that out loud. Vasquez is no longer scared of death — he has seen  _Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte_  with his own eyes, with his own breath, and walked away with both intact  — but he was no idiot. For a man missing six fingers Joshua could still shoot someone between the eyes, could still wrestle a man to the ground. Just because Vasquez no longer fears _Señora de las Sombras_ does not mean he will invite her before she is due.

So they stayed. The others left. Red Harvest, to return to his own people, never to be seen again. Teddy Q, to explore the world that has opened his eyes. Goodnight and Billy had finally separated their paths; Goodnight to follow after Sam, because who could help with grief and mourning and moving on more than the man who has been intimate with them all?  — and Billy, well.

Billy is here, with Vasquez. 22 years, and more to come. )

“ — He still talks too much.” Billy cuts off, when Vasquez reaches the fourth page. His words are hard, but his eyes are soft, when Vasquez looks up to see them.

Vasquez smiles. Flips the other five pages, still unread. “You talk as if you are surprised,  _amado_. You travelled with him for five years — would think you would be used to it, no?”

“No.” Billy huffs, but then puts his hand on Vasquez’s shoulder. Squeezes, even as his eyes look at the letter. Like he’s not even aware of the touch. “He’s having too much fun in Florida. Sam too. He spent the whole last page describing coconuts.”

“Eh, they’re having fun.” Vasquez shrugs. Lifts one hand, twines his fingers with Billy’s, let’s them  _squeeze_. “Coconuts’re good, you know? And they  _are_  on holiday. They can play sandcastles and swim,  _tomar el sol_  — whatever they want.”

Billy’s mouth twitches up. “Goody can’t sunbathe. He’ll turn into a lobster.”

Vasquez grins. Leans on his  _amorcito’s_ arm until Billy smiles back, because of course, Billy rocks would never let languages get the better of him. He has been learning, takes pride in _knowing_. Vasquez loves it. (Loves _him_.) “ _Langosta_.”

Billy’s smile wrinkles his dark eyes. Vasquez feels warm, even in this morning chill. “ _Labseuteo_.”

Vasquez laughs, and kisses Billy’s hand — right on the knuckles, rough as the earth below them and the years they’ve left behind.

“Hard to find them here,” Vasquez says, slow and low, “Sun and sand, plenty — shellfish, not so much.”

“No coconuts either.” Billy agrees.

“Mm,” Vasquez mms, pressing another kiss to weathered hands, eyes closed. “We should go on holiday.”

There is no reply. Vasquez does not look up. Doesn’t need to, to know that Billy’s eyes have gone very, very sad.

They are old, all of them. The years they’ve gathered and put behind them  — Vasquez loves all of them, because each of them is another year in which they prove death wrong. In which they prove fate,  _destino_ , all of it — wrong.

Joshua, the drunk, the child of a whore,  _el hijo bastardo_ , the man who gambled with death — still lives on, scarred and ugly, but with home. Has two children with Emma Cullen, if he remembers that last letter from Goodnight last year. Their love is different — no fire, no heat, not like her and  _Mateo_ — but people  _look_  at the women without husbands, and she had wanted children, and Joshua is not one to be alone. So they made do. And for all there is no spark between them, there is happiness — that, too, is victory in itself.

Sam and Goodnight, who carry the weight of war and death on their backs, carry grief so deep it chased like wolves — they survived long beyond the war, and more than that, they  _live_. They are old, so old, retired, but they are alive. Living. Moving beyond the blood and the corpses. Helping each other to complete their grieving and into life again. Sam had saved Goodnight once — Goodnight has saved Sam, now, in turn.

Horne, who thought he would see no redemption, see no light after losing his family, so much blood under his nails — when he finally died many, many years after Rose Creek, it was of old age, and surrounded by his new wife, new children.

Teddy, naive and young still, who thought to live the rest of his days in the dust of Rose Creek — he has begun his first steps into New York, and will see the world much wider than him.

And of course. Himself, and Billy. Men far from homes long lost to them, Vasquez over land and Billy over sea. Both with too much blood on their own hands, for their sin of existing in the colour they are, in speaking the tongue they were raised with. Neither of them expected to live long — numbers to their names, a price to their lives, on the run forever until a bullet outruns them first. Rose Creek had been their way to welcome the end, on their own terms.

But they lived. They live, like the others do, they live and they carried on their own path, and on that path they had joined hands. They’ve not let go. Not once.

And on that path they have left the numbers behind them, as they accumulate their age. Grow grey, grow scars, until their faces printed on papers pasted to walls of long-dead western saloons no longer match the faces they wear. Until they leave the desert and the open road behind, to find a town where no one knows them, never heard of Rose Creek,  _El Ciudad Diferente_ , and they begin the life they never had the chance to begin before. Land to call their own. Animals. Billy finds the wood and shapes them into art; Vasquez assembles them, welcomes the strain in his arms from anything but a gun, and they build their ranch, their home, their future (another thing, they never thought to have.)

And now they are here. And they are  _happy_.

But  _ay, por Dios_ , they are old.

His  _mamá_  had passed when she was only 21. Billy’s younger still. They have outlived the blood before them by years and decades, and to Vasquez this is victory. But to Billy...

Vasquez knows what Billy sees, when he sees them. Sees happiness, yes. Home. But his love is prideful,  _un pesimista_ , sees his creaking joints and his grey hair and thinks of all he has lost. The hands that can no longer throw knives like they used to, legs that can no longer run, not after the incident with the barn roof that snapped his left leg in two and has never healed right since. His love sees the scars on his hands and mourns the loss of anymore.

He knows Billy looks at Vasquez and sees the age. The lines, the hairline that has receded like the ocean, the grey in his curls, the small softness of his gut. Vasquez is younger than Billy by ten years, yes, but he is still closer to sixty than fifty, and his age shows more than it ever has — a back that aches, an arm that has struggled with weight since Rose Creek, an ankle that still hums when he places too much weight the wrong way after he’s sprained it one too many times in the field. He has started to cough, these days — one that has not left him for months, and he knows Billy looks with dread in his eyes everytime blood speckles Vasquez’s knuckles.

He knows Billy sees them, them with their greying beards and their frail bones and their lungs that wheeze and hurt from decades of smoke, and he knows that Billy sees  _fragile_. Sees their years stretched like spider’s webs; thin and spread. His love is too prideful. Will never admit how he misses the dark of their hair, the lean muscle they once had. Too prideful to admit that the idea of a holiday is too much for either of them now — not only because the ranch needs them, but because they are too old to travel. With their rattling lungs, and their aching joints, they stand no chance. Vasquez can hardly walk the length of the ranch without his vision speckling white, and Billy’s legs hurt too much from just the stairs alone. The shoreline, the ocean, the lobsters and the coconuts — they are too far now, and they will likely never see any of it again.

Still, though. Still.

“Billy,” Vasquez says, “Sit with me.”

Billy looks at him then. Eyes still so dark, soft and smooth and cradling as the night, and Vasquez knows there is an argument starting on that beautiful mouth of his. But then he sees Vasquez’s eyes — sees something, for sure, because then his mouth closes, and he nods, and moves to sit on Vasquez’s lap. Delicate, because he knows Vasquez’s legs hurt with too much weight. Adjusts. Hums something nice, when Vasquez puts one arm around Billy’s waist — smaller than his own, even more now in this age of theirs.

Billy turns a little. Vasquez leans, presses his head and ear against the cradle of Billy’s chest. Smiles, and feels Billy laugh, in that quiet way he always does.

His love may be prideful, may be sad, may see the years ahead and see the end looming. But Vasquez — Vasquez can only see, feel, hear, Billy. Billy, and the world around them. Billy and the cold, October morning around them, the slow, slow waking of the blue sky above in all its hues. The waking of the animals and the people and the earth.  _Home_ , in the land they’ve found and in the man Vasquez has spent the last 22 years with, warm and solid in his lap despite the fragile bones under fragile skin.

Vasquez sees the silky silver hair on Billy’s head and chin, the lines around his eyes, and he can only see  _love_. In each little wrinkle, Vasquez thinks  _victory_ , thinks proof of the years Billy has lived in comfort and laughter, enough to cause the smile lines that crease his skin. In each aching creak of their bones, the roughness of their palms, the growing soft of their bellies, Vasquez can only feel  _joy_ , pride, in the years of comfort they have acquired. That they have  _earned_. No longer struggling to survive, no longer struggling to be who they are.

The sunrise sleeps in Billy’s chest and wakes with his smile. His blood, pumping with every day that they live. And while Billy sees the years and sees the end, Vasquez can only see the journey there and think  _glad, I’m so glad, that I may spend them with you_.

There is no telling when things will end. Maybe tomorrow he will fall, and not be able to stand again. Maybe next week Billy will collapse while mending one of the troughs. Maybe now, right now, his heart will stop, and he will sleep forever while the world has just begun it’s waking. He cannot say. He cannot know. No one can.

But still. While they are no more coconuts, no more holidays by the beach, no more wild horses to tame and ride into the setting sun, he has Billy. He has their home, and their future, that lies with every second they continue to live. Hands still joined. Hearts still beating, breath still in their lungs. It is all a victory. It will never cease to be anything but.

There is beauty in each day they have survived, each week they still smile, each year they still laugh. They are the sons of the new year. Every sunrise, a new beginning. If Vasquez has to spend the rest of his life, no matter how long or short that may be, proving Billy that all of this is enough,  _more_  than enough — well, Vasquez will do so happily. He’s been doing it all this while. For Billy, and for himself, and it has worked, no matter how much Billy says otherwise. No matter how much Billy may not realize it himself. The way Billy holds onto him, rough fingers on the nape of his neck, mouth pressing soft against his forehead and bodies warming despite the autumn air — it says  _love_. Promise.  _Here I am, with you_ , they all say,  _look. Look at this beautiful morning. And we are still here. Isn’t that beautiful?_

They have time. They have all the time in the world. Every second is another glory, and they need nothing else. Worries and troubles may lurk, but Vasquez is satisfied to live each second knowing this: they are here. And they are content.

Vasquez closes his eyes. Presses his ear to Billy’s chest.

Listens; to the  _beat, beat, beat,_  and thinks of the days to come.

 

**Author's Note:**

> August 27, 1883: The enormous volcano at Krakatoa erupted, blowing itself apart and throwing enormous amounts of volcanic dust into the atmosphere.
> 
> October 28, 1886: The Statue of Liberty was dedicated in New York Harbor.
> 
> August 31, 1888: The first victim of the murderer called "Jack the Ripper" was discovered in London.
> 
> December 29, 1890: The Wounded Knee Massacre took place in South Dakota when U.S. Cavalry troopers fired on Lakota Sioux who had gathered. The killing of hundreds of unarmed men, women, and children essentially marked the end of Native American resistance to white rule in the West.
> 
> March 26, 1892: American poet Walt Whitman died in Camden, New Jersey at the age of 72.
> 
> May 1893: A decline in the New York stock market triggered the Panic of 1893, which led to an economic depression second only to the Great Depression of the 1930s.
> 
> April 1896: The first modern Olympic games, the idea of Pierre de Coubertin, are held in Athens, Greece.
> 
> Mar 15, 1902: Horse racing is banned in San Francisco, last race March 16th.
> 
> i based vas and billy's ages off of the age manuel garcia-rulfo and lee byung-hun were during the release of the film, so 35 and 45, assuming my math isn't terribly off base. forgive any historical inaccuries. i am, unfortunately, not very bright.
> 
> title based off of [New Year Son](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXXBQZOKtwI) by The Amazing Broken Man.
> 
> thank you jo for the fic trade, i had a blast writing this piece. i've always loved writing unnecessarily poetic schmoop and this was right up my alley. i'm sorry there wasn't more mention of coconuts and holidays but i hope you enjoyed it all the same! (and as for everyone else: kudos and comments are, as always, loved and appreciated.)


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